Knowledge Partners

June 04, 2007

Profile of TPG-Axon

NYTimes DealBook provides extracts from Absolute Return magazine's profile of the hedge fund which is run by a group of ex-Goldman Sachs exectuives including Dinakar Singh and Hari Kumar.

“Most long/short hedge funds say that they’re alpha-driven,” Eric Dillon, chief investment officer of Silver Creek Capital Management, told the magazine. “But I think that there’s a lot of intellectual dishonesty out there. In our view, Dinakar has built a firm that will deliver over a long period.

Private equity firm Texas Pacific Group owns a stake in TPG-Axon, which Mr. Singh runs with former Goldman colleagues Taizo Hasebe, Hari Kumar and Eric Mandelblatt. The fund launched in 2005 with $5 billion in capital and and now manages $8.3 billion. From inception through March, the firm’s two-year annualized return stands at 19.3 percent, Ms. Wood wrote.

While those returns aren’t the best in the business, Ms. Wood suggests that the funds’ investors take additional satisfaction from the fact that TPG-Axon actually hedges. Balancing risk with opposing trades is something that many private pools of capital, despite being called hedge funds, often don’t do — or don’t do well.

Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the private equity and venture capital ecosystem in India. View free samples of Venture Intelligence newsletters and reports.